Website tells story of York

7:53am Tuesday 30th September 2008

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A website about the history of York has been officially launched.

The website – www.historyofyork.co.uk – which has taken two years to build, was constructed by a top web design agency in conjunction with a panel of York’s history experts, and with the backing of 26 partners from the museum and heritage sector.

About 80 people have worked to build up the site, which already features 250 pages of information and more than 1,000 images – and it’s growing all the time.

Jim Richardson, lead designer at the Sumo web agency, said: “In terms of the number of partners involved, it is the most ambitious project we’ve worked on.”

Michael Woodward, director of business development at the York Museums Trust, said: “York is such a deeply historical and complex city that it can be difficult to understand how all the different elements fit together.

“The History Of York website is all about giving people a chance to grasp the basics of the story – a story that covers the whole of English history but from a local perspective. It’s also about enabling people to dig a little deeper into the areas that interest them.”

The website is bursting with features – in the Timeline section, a map of York metamorphoses through the ages from prehistory, through Roman and Viking, to the 20th century. Under Themes, a selection of articles such as The Downside Of Victorian York, Tudor Troubles and Daniel Defoe’s York tempt the reader to explore further.

Once your appetite for history has been sharpened, the website also offers a number of Trails – walking tours with maps that can be downloaded.

Andrew Morrison, curator of archaeology at the Yorkshire Museum, was one of the expert contributors to the site. He said: “It was good fun contributing to the site. It’s not the kind of thing that you do every day.”

The website welcomes suggestions for more items via the Contact Us page – suggestions which can then be developed by the different site partners.

Mr Richardson said: “The website is built so that it can keep growing constantly – the partner organisations can all add pictures and content and so on.”

Mr Woodward said: “We’re working on putting music and video on there, from the Early Music Society and the Yorkshire Film archive. The idea is that the History Of York brand can move into publications or an audio-visual show.”